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Active Recovery vs Passive Recovery!

Whether you spend your recovery day sitting on the couch or getting a massage, versus taking a yoga class or a walk on the beach, all depends on you. While everyone can agree that any type of recovery is better than none, there are differing opinions as to which is better.

Active Recovery.

Let’s be honest here, in an ideal world it would be nice to have all the money and time to go to unlimited yoga classes, cryotherapy sessions (all the rage in the celebrity world) and massage treatments, but our bank accounts just wont allow for that. Often times we only have one rest day and may be crunched for time, but the best kind of recovery is to get your body moving.

Active Recovery Rock Climbing

Instead of doing absolutely nothing, how about try a low intensity exercise that will help with muscle recovery by increasing the blood flow to your muscle tissue. Personally I love to do something less intense like walking my dogs on the beach, hiking, yoga (skip the pricey classes, and YouTube some recovery yoga), or take a long swim.

Working at a lower intensity as opposed to doing absolutely nothing totally helps your recovery time, and believe it or not you actually feel less sore then if you just sat around! Active recovery gets your circulation going, helping increase the amino acids and oxygen in your muscles so they can repair themselves.

Passive Recovery.

Remember that the whole reason for recovery is to allow your muscles to grow. When you workout you place a lot of stress on your muscles, which causes tiny muscle tears. The soreness you experience 1-3 days after a workout is due to all of those tiny muscle tears, and it’s during recovery that your muscles will heal and strengthen. In addition, amino acid supplementation is super important for muscle recovery.

Walking my dog on the beach

One of the most important passive recoveries is sleep; it heals you from the inside out. The hormone Prolactin is released during deep sleep, and its anti-inflammatory properties are important for joint recovery. Also, during deep sleep your body will repair any muscle tears that occur during the day.

Listen to your body!

As you can see there is no right or wrong with recovery, neither active nor passive is better than the other. Rather, it depends on your body and what you need at the time. Personally I believe both active and passive recovery is important, I exercise 4 days a week and on my off days I often surf or hike.

Yet there are days that I’m just too pooped to do anything, and that’s when I listen to my body and take a break. I often spend these days binge watching my favorite show and being a couch potato, which is totally ok! The rules are pretty simple, listen to your body and do what’s best for it, and don’t neglect movement completely!

What is your favorite recovery method? Please comment below =)

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The Importance of Amino Acids for Muscle Recovery!

Amino Acids exercise workout fitness

Whether your training for a marathon, a professional bodybuilding competition, or just to keep in shape, you need to be eating enough quality protein in order to build muscle!

Amino acids are the basic components of protein, so consuming enough protein is essential for the amino acids to determine the rate of muscle recovery.  There are twenty amino acids in the body, and nine are essential to your diet because your body can’t produce them on its own.  Of those nine, three are the branched chain amino acids (BCCA): leucine, isoleucine, and valine.

Benefits of BCCA’s

  • Decrease Muscle Soreness

We all know the feeling; a day or two after your workout, climbing a flight of steps and getting up from a low chair ain’t that easy anymore! Well this is because of delayed onset muscle soreness, and researchers believe it’s because of tiny tears in the muscles after exercise.

Research has shown that BCCA’s can decrease muscle damage, and shorten the length of muscle soreness. In addition, supplementing with BCCA’s before or during your workout, can speedup recovery time.

Personally I have seen a huge improvement in my muscle repair by supplementing with DCCA’s.  After several pulled muscles, I have seen my recovery time shorten significantly!

  • Increase of Muscle Growth
back muscles

BCCA’s are a popular method to build muscle growth! Studies have shown that consuming BCCA’s post workout can increase your muscle growth by 22%.  In addition, consuming a whey protein drink after a workout has also proven to greatly increase muscle growth.

  • Reduce Exercise Fatigue 

At some point everyone has experienced exercise fatigue, when were tired the last thing we want to do is exercise right? We may experience fatigue while in the middle of exercise, or 10 minutes into our workout and we just feel too tired to finish.

How quickly you get tired depends on several things, including how strenuous the exercise, duration, and your overall health.  However, studies have shown using BCCA’s during exercise helps to improve mental focus and reduce fatigue. This is because during exercise BCCA’s in our blood decrease, and tryptophan increases.  In our brain, tryptophan is then converted to serotonin and this contributes to fatigue during exercise.

  • Prevent Muscle Atrophy

As we age we lose muscle mass, it’s also a sign of malnutrition, chronic infections, cancers, or from a lack of physical activity.  Muscle atrophy occurs when our protein breakdown exceeds muscle protein synthesis.

In order to halt or slowdown this progression, it’s so important that we replace our BCCA’s during times of muscle atrophy.  Studies have shown supplementing with BCCA’s can improve the outcome for people who are experiencing muscle atrophy, such as cancer patients, and the elderly.

Foods to eat high in BCCA’s

Thankfully BCCA’s are found in many foods and protein supplements.  For those who consume a high protein diet, supplementing with BCCA’s may not be necessary.

Here are a few examples of animal protein rich foods:

  • Beef
  • Chicken
  • Tuna
  • Turkey
  • Eggs
  • Whey protein powders

A few examples of plant-based protein rich foods:

  • Soy protein powder
  • Tofu and tempeh
  • Lentils
  • Chickpeas
  • Nut butters
  • Kale
  • broccoli

Conclusion

BCCA’s can only be obtained through food and supplements because our bodies cant produce them.  Eating foods high in BCCA’s and supplementing with them can decrease muscle soreness, increase muscle growth, reduce fatigue and prevent muscle atrophy.

Now if any of you follow me on Instagram you know I am no gym rat, and only consistently started to exercise and weight train less than a year ago!  I’m also not a huge fan of supplements, because my belief is you can get all the vitamins and nutrients you need through the food you eat.

With that said because I don’t eat a lot of animal protein, and I try to eat a mostly plant-based diet, I started taking aΒ BCCA supplement a few months ago during my workouts, and I LOVE it!Β  I found a really awesome BCCA powder that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, doesn’t have a lot of fillers and tastes pretty good. With the powder, muscles feel so much better after a long workout, and when I tweak a muscle (which happens once and awhile), I’m usually back to normal within a few days.

Do you take a BCCA supplement? How do you like it? Please comment below, I would love to hear from you!